Best of Computing — September 2025

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   Video

   LaurieWired·35w

   What if Humanity forgot how to make CPUs?

   A thought experiment exploring what would happen if humanity lost the ability to manufacture CPUs. The scenario traces the gradual decline of modern computing over 30 years, from cloud infrastructure failures to internet fragmentation, highlighting how older hardware with larger node sizes would outlast modern chips due to electromigration. The piece examines how software optimization would become critical, vintage computing would resurge, and society would eventually revert to 1970s-80s era technology.

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2. 2
   Article

   Lonely Programmer·38w

   Before and After Linux

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3. 3
   Article

   Hacker News·34w

   Apple's iPhone 17 chip becomes the fastest single-core CPU in the world on PassMark, beating PC chips and Apple's own M3 Ultra — passively-cooled A19 CPU catapults past power-hungry competitors

   Apple's A19 chip in the iPhone 17 achieved the highest single-core performance score on PassMark benchmarks, surpassing desktop processors from Intel, AMD, and even Apple's own M3 Ultra. The A19 scored 5,149 points while consuming only 4W of power, compared to 44W for Intel's Core Ultra 9 285K and 56W for AMD's EPYC processor. However, the chip's multi-threaded performance remains limited due to fewer cores compared to desktop alternatives.

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